


Unable To Do Anything But

by thestarsarewinning



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Canon Compliant, F/M, Funerals, Gaila existed and deserves acknowledgement, Grief, I don't even know how to tag this, I'm way late to the party with this one, Introspection, James T. Kirk's stupidity, Near Death Experiences, Nyota is done with everyone's shit, POV Nyota Uhura, Post-Star Trek (2009), Star Trek: Into Darkness, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 14:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14896511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsarewinning/pseuds/thestarsarewinning
Summary: He loses everything. He loses his mother and his world and Nyota can only watch.





	Unable To Do Anything But

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm maybe four years too late writing this fic but oh well.
> 
> I'm blaming procrastination and exams, so here's 2k words of Nyota centric angst.
> 
> I confess, I generally ship spirk and am in the middle of writing a long, angsty academy au, but this wouldn't leave me alone and here we are. 
> 
> This can be either be read as canon compliant or as pre-kirk/spock, depending on how hard you squint. 
> 
> I have no right to anything and am just borrowing the characters to play house.

He loses everything. He loses his mother and his world and Nyota can only watch. 

He wouldn’t call his loss everything, he hasn’t, but it’s the only description Nyota can think of that does any justice to what he has lost, even with all the languages she could choose from. 

His mother and his world are gone, and she watches, watches him struggle to remain in command of his emotions, watches his facade slowly fall away and watches as he throws Jim Kirk into a console, again and again and again. Kirk isn’t even fighting back, just letting the torrent of rage crash over him.

Nyota’s never seen Spock like this, not ever. 

It should terrify her. It should terrify her that she’s watching the man she loves breakdown in the most horrifying, brutal way imaginable, but she doesn’t have it in her to feel anything but desperation. She wants to help, she wants to be the one to make this better for Spock, the one he’d show this onslaught of emotion to, rather than as a result of Kirk’s provocation. She wants him to stop beating the shit out of Kirk, but only because the longer this goes on, the more likely it is that his permanent record will be affected by this.

She really wishes Kirk hadn’t shown up, returning miraculously, impossibly from Delta Vega. 

It eventually stops, the moment of violence, and she keeps watching as Spock turns away, stepping down from the bridge, from the chair, away from it all and from her, and she can only watch.

He won’t want her to run after him, won’t appreciate it if she does, won’t want her to be by his side, not right now. 

He’s lost everything and all she can do is watch, trapped on the sidelines of this madness, and watch as he and Kirk somehow collaborate to come up with the craziest, stupidest, riskiest plan that they carry out and pull off, despite the odds. 

She watches him pilot that ship to certain death, because there is no way in hell that the madman Kirk brought with him should be able to pull off what’s needed, and, in that moment, she hates him. 

He’s lost everything and he’s about to lose so much more, she’s about to lose him, stuck watching that ship fly into a collision, and Nyota wants to know if this heart-stopping, ‘he’s-not-going-to-make it-but-he-has-to-but-he-won’t’ feeling is anything like the moment he saw the ground slip away. 

Against all sanity, Kirk’s manic, last-ditch plan comes through, and she watches Spock materialise onto the pad with a feeling she never wants to experience again. It’s as though all the weight from her chest has been lifted at the sight of him, and for a moment she feels as though everything is alright, and then she watches him stare down at the platform beneath his feet, head bowed, oblivious to Kirk’s celebration, and that feeling dies suddenly. 

Because he’s losing her, losing her, lost her, and this is where is happened, the only place left for it to have happened, and he’s lost his planet and his mother and she’s watching, unable to do anything but. 

She can’t do anything and she hates it. Hates it with a burning passion she never thought she had within her. She doesn’t hate Kirk, hate the intricacies of the different Romulan dialects, hate the bad macaroni and cheese offered in the canteen of the languages building at the Academy the way she hates watching. She can’t stop, though. She watches Kirk get awarded and promoted, she watches as refugee camps are set up for Vulcans seeking refuge on Earth, she watches Spock struggle to keep everything inside when even his father lets some of his emotions be seen. 

The funerals are worse.

The first was for every member of Starfleet to die; for the cadets and the crewmen, for everyone who’d been unlucky enough not to have the external inertial dampeners left on. And she’d watched, they all watched the ceremony, as the Fleet Admiral spoke and professors bowed their heads and Nyota couldn’t help but think of Gaila. Of Gaila, of the communications officer of the Farragut, the one who should have been on the Enterprise, and she watches as Spock stands alongside the instructors and a single flag is folded over a single casket, symbolic in purpose and completely empty. 

Then there is a mass ceremony for every Vulcan and Federation citizen to die that day. Spock goes, his father is still the ambassador and he is still the ambassador’s son and he lost his people and she goes with him, standing by his side even though he’d tried to dissuade her from attending. She stands by his side and watches as his face remains impassive, carefully and purposefully blank, though his hands tremble by his sides and the back of his neck is flushed green. 

His mother’s comes last. She hadn’t been sure whether she should attend or not; there had been no mention from Spock of her attending and she’d never known his mother and now never would — meeting Amanda Grayson had been postponed until after graduation, until after she wasn’t a cadet dating her professor — but she goes in the end. She goes, for Spock, in case this one act means something to him, and she watches his father bow his head, press two fingers to another empty casket, murmuring a single word under his breath as he does. She knows the meaning and she watches as Sarek’s eyes close, for just a moment. 

She watches the moment unfold, a moment afforded by the private nature of the ceremony, where the turnout is restricted to Sarek, Spock, Amanda’s old friends and three of her ex-colleagues. And Nyota. 

She doesn’t mention the visitor Jim Kirk found on Delta Vega, someone other than Scott or Keenser, someone whose absence shouldn’t be noticeable, but somehow is. 

She watches everyone but Spock say goodbye in one way or another and remains by his side, steadfast. His hands tremble again and he stands so close to her that their hands brush, and she tries to project something of comfort. The proximity, she knows, is his one concession to himself, and she watches him from the corner of her eye knowingly. 

He leaves last, and she waits with him, watching as he remains rooted to the spot, staring ahead at the casket. She thinks, and thinks is the only word applicable because the moment is over before she can begin to comprehend it, she thinks he is crying. His head is bowed and he hasn’t looked at her since she appeared at his side outside the doors to the hall, but watching him further gives no answers. She stands close to him and waits and, eventually, he looks at her.

The look on Spock’s face is identical to the one he’d worn in the transporter room, as though for a moment, logic and restraint has flown out fo the window and he lets himself look heartbroken. He’s lost his people, his planet and his mother, he’s lost his mother and Nyota cannot begin to comprehend how he feels. 

She doesn’t even know if he would admit to feeling, and that terrifies her. It shouldn’t, but it does. He’s lost everything and yet Spock remains unyielding in his composure. His father has not, every other Vulcan she has met in the past few weeks has allowed their grief to surface, quietly, yes, dignified, yes, but they react. They’re grieving, as is their right, but Spock refuses. He struggles and, apart from that one moment when she thought he might actually kill Jim Kirk, he remains staunchly withdrawn. 

They leave together or, more accurately, he’s one step ahead and she pushes to keep up, and outside, Sarek and the few guests that had been present are gone. Instead, Nyota is surprised to see Jim Kirk. 

Spock’s eyebrow quirks at the sight of him and it’s the first time his hands have stopped trembling since he first laid eyes on the casket. 

Kirk seems just as out of place as Nyota feels, but he paints his expression into a look Nyota doesn’t think she’s ever seen on his face before, something tentative, apologetic, an olive branch that Spock accepts with a nod and a single word, “Captain.”

She watches, a few steps behind, as he and Kirk walk side by side, strides perfectly matched as they walk away. His head is still bowed, and he waits for her to catch up once he and Kirk part ways outside the Vulcan embassy, the new rank insignia on Kirk’s uniform catching the sunlight as he walks away, and Nyota watches him walk away, keeps watching him long after she should have stopped and something doesn’t quite seem right. 

Spock offers her his arm, tentatively, and she places her hand in the crook of his elbow, as they leave, well aware of the significance of the gesture for him, and she stops watching, just enjoys the sunlight and his presence, despite the circumstances. 

She can’t stop watching, though. Not permanently. She hates that she’s always watching, always, but it continues. She watches the rebuilding effort, the new cadets that arrive in droves, the process of making her graduation, promotion and position on board the Enterprise official, and she watches Spock teach Kirk the intricacies of running a starship, watches as Spock artfully avoids any conversation of his mother, even with his father, any acknowledgement to the enormity of his losses and the illogic of doing so. 

Eventually, Nyota watches as he moves back onto the Enterprise, taking a shuttle and walking the long way through the corridors, avoiding the transporter room where his mother never materialised, carrying his belongings on board with hers, and unpacking the few items he’s deemed important enough to bring along for this mission, the first and trial mission of their strange, patched up crew. Hers are few, most left in storage or at her room at the Academy, nowhere near filling her quarters, and his possessions are equally sparse — a few artefacts from Vulcan that are now infinitely more precious, sweaters she knows his mother had knitted, and several holos that he leaves in a drawer. 

She doesn’t ask, he won’t want her to, and they leave it at that. 

She wants to ask, though. Wants things to go back to how they were before, when she could ask any question and he’d answer as best he could, give her any answer within his reach or find one for her, but it’s been a long time since that had happened. 

Hell, Nyota wants to be able to acknowledge her feelings for him, wants him to acknowledge her effect on him, like he’d just begun to, before the lightning storm in space, but he doesn’t say it, and she’s not sure if he really is the man she loves. 

Before, she hadn’t been watching, always, always watching. She wasn’t watching him lose everything, always, always losing, but that’s changed and never left. 

She’s still watching, when Kirk comes up with another idiotic, stupid plan that breaks every directive Starfleet has ever drilled into them, watching when Spock doesn’t dissuade him, watching when it all goes awry, when Kirk and McCoy nearly die, when Spock leaves the shuttle — she’s watching his status, monitoring his frequencies, glued to her station — and when the Enterprise is revealed to civilisation who’s continued existence goes against the nature of their mission. 

She watches as Spock gets trapped within the volcano, as he accepts his fate, refuses rescue, and she’s again watching him pilot that ship into a collision, and she hates him. Hates him again, hates him for making her feel like everything has turned to grey, a black hole in her chest that’s only alleviated when he materialises on the transporter pad, right where his mother didn’t. 

Nyota thinks that, maybe, she’s done with watching. Permanently, this time. She can’t watch anymore. 

She just can’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts?


End file.
